Remember: Any Internet Service Provider that requires client software to be installed should be avoided at all costs. Do not install ISP software, only use Dialup Networking and the browser you already have instead. If your Internet Service Provider requires you use their software, get another ISP if possible.

Note: DO NOT use any Security Port Scanner that tells you to: "Disable all protection software to avoid false alarms." They are a scam and leave you with a false sense of security. With your protection disabled they are able to penetrate your computer and make it look like an attack (in some cases they can implant a trojan or virus onto your computer). Keep your protection ON at all times.

Hundreds of thousands of "hackers" and information seekers are lurking on the internet, just waiting to get a trojan horse installed on your PC, access it and find what's on your system. BOClean is your best defense against them. No wading through dozens of false alarms only to discover that you're unable to remove a trojan that's deeply seated in your registry, while realizing your system's contents have already been accessed.

No complications in installing "firewalls" that end up slowing down your connections and offer very limited protection. No needing to logoff, ever.

With BOClean, any (covered) trojan horse will be automatically detected and deleted within 10 seconds of its execution (using standard manufacturer's configuration). Which is well within the time it takes to find your system and access it, so no information is ever likely to leave your system without your knowing. With no effort on your part (well, OK, a mouseclick).

BOClean enables you to:

Destroy trojans and remove registry entries.

Delete all traces of trojan without requiring rebooting.

Disconnect the threat without disconnecting you.

Generate optional report and safe copy of evidence.

Automatically sweep and detect in the background.

Comodo BOClean will protect itself from trojan horse tampering or shutdown, so there's no worry about being left unprotected. BOClean comes with a money-back guarantee, if you're not happy with how BOClean works, they will give you your money back. All support is by Privacy Software Corporation (via email) at no charge. There's also no subscriptions or other "gimmick" charges to pay later. FREE weekly trojan database updates are available from their website.

http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/ "CERIAS" - The world's foremost university center for multidisciplinary research and education in areas of information security (computer security, network security, and communications security), and information assurance.

PurgeIE deletes cache, cookies and other tracks left by Internet Explorer that reveal your surfing habits.

Cache files (offline and online), unprotected cookies, the record of 'Visited URLs', the Typed URL Address dropdown list, the History folders, strays, and recent links (Documents) are among the categories you can choose to purge.

The purge functions maintain the integrity of Internet Explorer's "Index.dat" files. A function is provided for purging 'Stray' URLs and 'Stray' Cookies/Cache Files. These can occur if the "Index.dat" files and the data file get out-of-sync.

For IE-5+, you can purge the Auto Complete Forms and Previous Searches. The new version includes purge of the Windows Recycle bin.

You can designate Cookies to protect. For safety's sake, PurgeIE can also provide a preview of the cleanup.

This is Shareware with a 10 non-contiguous days trial. Registration is $14.95 (US).

A site with plenty of freeware programs, some essential for Windows 95/98, NT and Windows 2000.

Just one of the many freeware programs:

AnalogX Script Defender - With all the script viruses being emailed around these days, and virus authors getting more clever by the minute, it's important to do everything you can to ensure you aren't their next victim.

AnalogX Script Defender intercepts all requests to execute a variety of different script types that are commonly used to infect your computer - Visual Basic Scripting (.VBS), Java Script (.JS) and Windows Scripting (.WSH) are the most common and can all be intercepted by SDefender. Best of all, you can add other scripting extensions later on when virus authors figure out how to exploit something else.

What advertisers don't want you to know, Gorilla Design Studio will tell you.

You are being tracked as you surf the web, right now.

Not by me, but by the advertisers.

www.smartin.addr.com/ This site contains a listing of many different Internet servers that can be placed into your hosts file for blocking ads and other means of unknowingly tracking you while you surf the net.

WebWasher is a powerful filter program for Web pages, originally developed by Siemens: it is installed on your PC or server as an add-on to your browser. Unwanted content - such as advertising - is not even loaded via the network. WebWasher also avoids unnecessary reloading of web objects and de-animates images. This saves you up to 45% of the data which are transmitted. Your browser displays Web pages practically free of advertising.

The result is a considerably faster page display, shorter search times in the Internet and savings in provider fees. One click on the program symbol switches WebWasher on or off as you need it.

WebWasher makes your browser an intelligent assistant.

WebWasher controls the datastream between user and web in both directions: Incoming cookies from the Web server and outgoing cookies that are sent by the browser to the server.

WebWasher recognizes advertising banners by their characteristic graphic dimensions, special HTML patterns, with the aid of an URL exception list and other analytic methods. Therefore the program is able to recognize most Java/JavaScript stealth mechanisms and deactivate them.

The filter functions can be freely configured. With just a click of your mouse you can add selected objects on the current Web site to your filter list. From then on, they are no longer loaded or displayed.

Spy Checker - Spychecker.com is a public database of Spyware products. The database is maintained on a daily basis and new software is added or removed as needed. Information is gathered from Internet sources, ad companies and reliable sources in the software distribution industry.

Are you wondering whether you have any Spyware products installed on your system? Do you want to remove them or prevent them from calling the "mothership"? There are free tools available to detect and remove unwanted spyware applications.

There are a lot of dodgy programs out there that may get installed on users' computers without their knowledge or consent. Many applications described as "freeware" come infested with parasitic software that latches onto the web browser, provides little or no benefit to the user and can:

Plague the user with unwanted advertising (adware).

Add advertising links to all web pages, over which the author of the page has no control and for which they receive no remuneration (some people call this scumware).

Watch everything the user does on-line and send information back to marketing companies (spyware).

Leave security holes whereby arbitrary code can be executed on the user's computer (typically this is used to allow the program to update itself); if the software does not make proper use of cryptographic authentication, it could be possible for hackers as well as the responsible company to execute arbitrary code on oyur computer.

Degrade system performance and cause errors thanks to being badly-written.

So be careful what you install - you may be getting more than you bargained for!

Shouldn't anti-virus software detect this stuff?

Maybe, technically they are not viruses, but 'trojan horse' code. Sometimes they are even installed with the "consent" of a user who hasn't bothered to read the small print or does not understand what they are. Often they come completely without warning.

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